


The Case of the Wandering Parcel

by calvinahobbes



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:29:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calvinahobbes/pseuds/calvinahobbes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jenny and Madame Vastra investigate the disappearance of one mysterious parcel and one young clerk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Wandering Parcel

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to kiki_eng for spending so much time and thought on the beta. You were awesome ♥ Any remaining mistakes are very much my own.

By 1885 my mistress had developed a stout reputation throughout the City for being one to turn to in times of distress. She was still an unknown, as she would always remain to the greater population, but Rumour trickled, as it does, through the usual venues, bringing with it stories of families reunited, robbers apprehended, and mysteries resolved. These were the tales that attracted the attention of other troubled souls. One such soul came to me on a late afternoon by way of a knock at the kitchen door, pulling me away from the task of preparing my mistress' breakfast.

The girl by the door had about her a harried look. Her clothes were modest but kept in the best of order, and I took from them that she worked as a kitchen maid in some respectable household. As I let her in she apologized profusely for disturbing me and looked about furtively, asking to speak to me in private. "That is, if you are indeed Miss Jenny," she added hastily, and gave me a scrutinising look.

"I am indeed she," I told her, and drew her to a chair by the fire. "And you may speak freely, for I am all the staff that Madame has with her."

Her eyes had come to rest on my freshly abandoned work station, where the rather bloodied cuts of swine offal rested. I had long since ceased to be discomfited by my mistress' diet, but I spared myself a moment of regret that I had just arranged the organs on their customary silver serving tray.

"I hope you don't find me terribly rude for coming here," she said again, tearing her gaze away from the butcher’s wares that no doubt seemed eerie to her. "Only -- I find myself in such a pickle as I don't know what to do with myself." Here, her chin quivered ominously, in a way all too familiar to me from countless other cases. I felt immediately that empathetic emotion that I think we both, my mistress and I, feel so keenly that it moves us ever to give aid to the wretches we encounter. The girl in front of me procured a kerchief from about her person, but did not loose a single tear.

Her story was related in a relatively short amount of time, and I promised to bring the case to my mistress' attention as soon as she had dressed for dinner. It was another little white lie in a line of many, and I saw the girl hesitate briefly -- no doubt she wondered how I should manage to help Madame dress and prepare her dinner all in time.

I had just seen her off and finished arranging breakfast for Madame and tea for myself when the bell rang. The sound made something stir in the pit of my belly, and I looked forward to bringing this latest case before my mistress.

In the upstairs parlour, where Madame favored to take her first meal upon waking, I found her wrapped up in her robe and already taking her first pipe. "I do wish you wouldn't smoke before eating, Madame," I said as I placed the tray on the table. "It must ruin your taste for it, I'm sure."

Madame Vastra gave me an amused look as she stood by the window, one arm behind her back, gazing out at the thinning crowd on the street below. In profile the spines on the back of her head made her look nearly regal. "Nonsense, Jenny, it will do no such thing," she said and came to join me by the table.

As we took our sustenance together -- she delicately consuming the raw organs with knife and fork, I taking my usual bread and cold meat -- I related the story as it had come to me:

Lucy Brewer worked in the household of a merchant. In the kitchen of her employ she had made the acquaintance of a young clerk by the name of Billy Appleby, in whom she had placed some hopes for the future. One month past, Billy had visited her on Sunday and taken her to the park, as was their wont, but on this day he had displayed an unusually nervous disposition and he had not tarried long. Our Lucy had received a note from him on the following Sunday that he had urgent business to attend to and could not meet her. She had worried, but had soon received another missive from him that he looked forward to their next Sunday meeting. This meeting he had upheld, but he had refused to divulge to Lucy the nature of the predicament she believed him to be in. At their parting he had, however, entrusted Lucy with a small, flat parcel and made her swear that she would hide it safely and not speak of it to anyone. Lucy, by this point thoroughly disturbed by her beau's mood, had sworn it and had slipped the parcel under her bed in the room she shared with the house-maid. She had not spared it much thought except to wonder at what it contained. When next Sunday she did not hear or see Billy, she went first to his lodging, and upon not finding him at home, to his place of work. After searching throughout the places she could imagine him to be and even calling upon his cousin, his only living relative, without finding him, Lucy had returned home. She had decided to look inside the parcel for a clue as to Billy's whereabouts, but had found the parcel to be vanished, at which point she had begun to truly fear for Billy's safety. Her only remaining hope was with Madame Vastra, whom she had dared only to seek out indirectly, viz. through me. (Very few of the people who come to our door enquire directly after Madame; most prefer to go through me. Regardless of their preference all petitioners must accept me as their sole confidante.)

"It is a remarkably bare-boned case, Jenny," Madame said as she sipped her tea. "I cannot even tell whether there is something Alien to it, or whether the young Billy Appleby has merely got himself in an unlawful pinch."

I studied her face in the light of the single lamp, the even yellow of it so close to her face making the scales of her cheeks glisten with a preternatural green glow. "Does it matter which?" I asked carefully.

Her eyes, which had stared into the middle distance above my shoulder, snapped back into focus to fix on me. "Not at all, my dear. I have made a vow to aid all I find in need, regardless of how trivial their problems may seem." Her gaze slid away from mine once again, and I felt a chill settle on me as her attention went from me to focus on the problem at hand. "First we must ascertain the nature of the parcel. It is without a doubt the key to the entire problem."

~ * ~

We supped quickly, and Madame went to dress in her customary sporting dress, the wide grey skirt of which she favored when she needed freedom of movement and over which she usually wore a flowing black hooded cloak. I had not yet experienced the comfort and ease of trousers, and so I still wore my heavy working skirts even when going out on our nightly endeavours.

Outside the address of Billy Appleby's lodgings, Madame easily scaled the uneven and grimy wall up to the appropriate window. The building was low, and standing on a barrel, I could just touch Madame's hand as she reached down towards me. Although I tried my best I could not but drag and dirty the skirt hem against the wall, and I nearly stumbled into the small room. Had it not been for the secure hold of my mistress as I lost my balance, I would have fallen and made a ruckus. As I righted myself, Madame was already turning away to study the room, and I noticed wryly that her dress had remained spotless.

The small bachelor’s apartment contained nothing that caught my attention. It was a pleasant enough room, lived-in, but tidy nonetheless. A shelf above the bed contained some almanacks beside a Bible and a book of sermons. The space beneath the bed held only dust, and the pockets of all coats and trousers were empty. I was already beginning to despair of ever finding Billy Appleby.

"Well, I'll say that settles it," Madame said briskly. "Come along, Jenny. We must hurry." She slipped soundlessly out the window, and although my ears pricked they did not detect the noise of her landing. As I leaned out the window, I saw her standing ready beneath me, and in my eagerness to join her I tore my skirt on the window sill and scrambled to free the offending article. "Do be careful, Jenny. One day our lives may depend upon us not leaving the smallest trace behind," she chided. I nodded silently, quietly ashamed of what a burden I was making myself.

~ * ~

Inside Turnbull & Associates the air was still and dry. Madame's boots scuffed on the floor planks as she strode purposefully through the establishment. I resigned myself to waiting patiently by the window, keeping abreast of any movement on the street outside, trusting that she would instruct me if she needed any other assistance. The warm night was growing moist, and the heavy air seemed to dampen all sounds.

Madame was rustling carefully through the papers on various desks. She was evidently searching for something particular, but I bit my tongue and did not ask. There would be time for explication later. Finally she stopped, staring silently at a sheaf of paper, her nostrils flaring, and I wondered briefly that she could read the writing there, for the room was excessively bleak.

Madame carefully placed the paper back, seemingly in the exact spot whence she had lifted it. Her eyes in the darkness appeared to me mere shadowy pits as she looked at me. "I'm afraid we must ask Lucy to accompany us for the last stretch of our journey," she said, and I nodded readily.

We made it quickly to Lucy's residence, but had some trouble getting hold of her. In the end there was nothing for it but to knock on the door and ask to see her. The man-servant looked decidedly peeved at having been woken and studied me doubtfully when I claimed to be a distant cousin. Finally Lucy joined us, looking saucer-eyed and trembling, but as quietly determined as I had seen her earlier.

Madame Vastra stayed in the shadows, her hood covering her face, and I marvelled once again at the simple elegance of her, the calm assurance of her movements and the effortless way she stayed mostly unseen. Lucy curtsied for her, and Madame hissed, "We don't have time for silly protocol now, girl. Only you can determine whether Billy is still among us," and she swept off.

I put a steadying hand to Lucy's elbow and rushed to follow my mistress -- whereto I knew not.

She lead us through dark, glistening streets and rank alleyways, pausing occasionally to look skyward and breathe deeply of the night air. The streets were near to empty at that late hour, and we passed only one gentleman who dutifully doffed his hat for Madame. I wondered briefly what a sight we must make, a lady and two maid servants rushing through the night streets of London. We were coming closer and closer to the docks, and I spared a thought for Madame's weapons, all of which save a short knife had been left at home.

Finally we came to a stop by the side of a warehouse that looked like so many others of its kind in that part of the city. Madame turned towards Lucy, still keeping her face hidden. "What we see might frighten you. It is important, however, that you remain lucid. Do not let your eyes deceive you into thinking your young man is safe until you have ascertained with absolute clarity that he is indeed still the man you knew.” My heart rate sped at those words, for I suspected that otherworldly dangers lurked beyond the doors. “He is your charge,” Madame instructed her, “and you must see to it that you bring him quickly to safety. We will meet by the corner." She pointed to the end of the narrow passage of buildings. Lucy nodded in awful silence.

Madame transferred her gaze to me -- I felt it as surely as I felt the imminent danger. Her strong hand grasped my shoulder briefly, and I felt the simple touch bring me no end of courage and comfort.

We went to the wide double doors and paused briefly. There were dull sounds from within, voices speaking, shoes tapping. Without a gesture or sound of warning, Madame raised her leg high and kicked. The racket the doors made as they were forced inward was deafening.

The sight that met us made me briefly think my mistress had made some grave mistake. A band of six men in workman's clothing stayed their milling about the large cavernous building and stared at us. They looked genuinely taken aback, as anyone would who were intruded upon by three wild ladies such as ourselves. Then their stillness registered within me, and a chill trickled down my spine. These were not men at all, but creatures who had donned the skin of men the way men don clothing.

In the very next moment, all six creatures propelled themselves into motion, lurching towards us. As they advanced, the space behind them came into view. A young man was sitting there, bound to a chair and looking much the worse for wear. Lucy gave out a cry and made for the victim, striking a curve around the ominous men who had their whole attention focused on Madame. Just before I could cry out to our companion to take care, she stopped some distance away from her beau and stared. The young man moaned pitifully, and as his head lolled back on his shoulders, the two made eye contact. Lucy seemed to stifle another cry and rushed to his aid, freeing him quickly and supporting him as they snuck along the wall towards the exit.

The creatures had come so near us now that Madame's first weapon of defence could strike them, but as most other adversaries these creatures never suspected the deadly range of her tongue. It lashed out quickly and knocked down one, then another. The rest of the band paused briefly, a vacant look of confusion marring their otherwise dulled expressions.

"The boy does not have the parcel," Madame called out in a firm voice. "It has been taken by another. He gave it to the girl for safe keeping, but she has lost it."

The four who remained standing exchanged brief looks between themselves. Then a fit of rage seemed fill the one furthest to our left, and he charged towards us with renewed vigour. As Madame stepped forward to meet him in a hand-to-hand exchange of blows, the others took to his example and swarmed us. I had no choice but to do my best, and punched and kicked as Madame had taught me, but I had not the strength she did, and the creatures seemed nearly impervious to pain.

As I pressed my back against that of my mistress, I caught in the corner of my eye the muted, tell-tale glint of her short knife. She lashed with it and cut one creature across the torso, but this only seemed to enrage it even further. In a rush it jumped on her and settled blunt human teeth in her shoulder. I held back a groan of fright and managed to fend off my own assailant.

The next moment I heard my mistress shout, "Down," and thankfully the instincts of our training sessions mingled with the sense memory of other such fights so that I dropped to my knees without a second of hesitation. Madame's armed hand rushed over my head in a wide circle. The creatures fell back, snarling and whining, but did not approach again. I gasped for breath and felt the cold of the ground seep slowly through my skirts. "Come along, Jenny," Madame told me, and I staggered to my feet, making my way towards the doors slowly, while Madame kept a watchful eye on our adversaries.

Once outside and out of immediate range of sight of the creatures, Madame seemed to relax. "They will not follow us. They know their package has been lost for now." She wiped her knife on a handkerchief and discarded it where she stood. "Are you well?" Her hard eyes looked me over and I managed to affirm to her satisfaction. She pulled the hood up over her face and I reached out with slightly trembling hands to right the drape of the cloak over her shoulder. Her mouth, just visible underneath the shadow of the hood, curved in a smile, and I felt better. We made our way to the designated corner to meet the young people.

~ * ~

"I'm afraid I understand very little of what happened tonight," I said later from my seat on the rug by the fire. I studied Madame where she rested on the sofa across from me. She was in her customary smoking jacket, nursing the ember of a long-stemmed meerschaum pipe and not looking for all the world as if she had fought with considerable vigour not some few hours earlier.

I had personally ascertained the integrity of her shoulder where one of the beasts had bit at her. The scales had been smooth and unharmed under my fingers. I had washed the worst of the grime off my own person and had placed my maltreated dress in the washing and mending pile in my room. Madame had seen me nursing my right arm, which was sore from the fight, and had forbidden me to start on any chore until I had rested.

"Nonetheless it was indeed a very bare-boned case," Madame replied and sucked at the bit of the pipe. "I dare say Turnbull & Associates are the true culprits. They have without a doubt taken up business with persons better avoided. I believe that young Mr. Appleby had the misfortune of coming into contact with an unearthly contraption known as psychotransmogrible paper. It is a kind of document that, if it is stolen, affects any sapient creature near it to take it and attempt to bring it back to its owner. It can travel this way, changing hands any number of times, throughout the galaxies, in its attempt to get back to its rightful place. This particular document was surely a very important one, perhaps initially stolen by the individuals we encountered in the warehouse. Mr. Appleby was psychically affected to remove the paper from the care of Turnbull etc., just like he was induced to relinquish it into Lucy's hands. If I am not mistaken, the man-servant in Lucy's household was its next victim, and who is to say where the paper is to be found as we speak?"

"The men in the warehouse," I said. "They were not really men at all, were they, Madame?"

She fixed me with one of her inscrutable looks. "You are perceptive for your kind, my dear. Indeed they were not men -- not any longer. Their mortal shells had long since been appropriated by another life form -- the Raxacoricofallapatorian. I have encountered them once before, on my travels. Their smell is quite distinguishable, even in the pungency of your mammalian nests."

This remark made me somewhat uncomfortable. "Surely we do not smell so very bad, we humans?" I asked, fearing that I somehow repulsed my mistress, whom I admired so very much.

"Bad is in the opinion of the individual, I suppose, but certainly you do not smell of -- roses, I believe is your term." This made me blush quite profusely. "But you have such distinctive scents, all of you. It is most convenient when one needs to track one of you down, as I did this night."

"Surely _I_ do not smell very bad?" I asked, studying the weave of the rug.

"No, Jenny. You smell like home," she replied and met my smile with one of her own.

**Author's Note:**

> \- This was my attempt to write a story about Vastra and Jenny fighting crime in London -- kind of like Holmes and Watson, only cooler, and with less snobbery and more fisticuffs. Due to the nature of the pastiche, I decided to make Jenny the Boswell of the duo.  
> \- Thanks to [daaakota@deviantart](http://daaakota.deviantart.com/) I now firmly believe that [Madame Vastra smokes a pipe](http://daaakota.deviantart.com/art/Madame-Vastra-and-Jenny-212495858).  
> \- The construction of the first deep-level underground railway, [The City and South London Railway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_South_London_Railway) (wiki), commenced in 1883. This was probably the digging that woke Vastra from her long sleep. I imagine Vastra spent quite a few years between '83 and '84 travelling with the Doctor, encountering psychic paper derivations and Slitheen criminals, before settling down to fight crime in London. In 1885, Vastra and Jenny are still relatively new companions.


End file.
